Italian Film

Magnifico! With two classic Italian crime films on the horizon - L'Assassino and Milano Calibro 9 - we invite you to explore our full range of fine Italy films: over 200 DVDs and Blu-rays from £5.99 each.

French film may be better known in the UK, but Italian cinema is the true leader through its impact on the course of cinema, psychological depth and, of cours... [+]

Magnifico! With two classic Italian crime films on the horizon - L'Assassino and Milano Calibro 9 - we invite you to explore our full range of fine Italy films: over 200 DVDs and Blu-rays from £5.99 each.

French film may be better known in the UK, but Italian cinema is the true leader through its impact on the course of cinema, psychological depth and, of course, visual beauty and style.

Alongside must-see classics from directors such as Visconti, Bertolucci, De Sica and Antonioni, you'll find modern greats including The Great Beauty, Il Postino and Le Quattro Volte. Dive in and immerse yourself in the finest cinema.

Italy has twice led world cinema, first with the epic 'Super Spectacles' of the 1910s, and then, post-WWII, with the neo-realist dramas of Roberto Rossellini and Vittoria De Sica; films such as Rome, Open City and The Bicycle Thieves that brought a new authenticity to global film-making.

Following on from this, directors such as Luchino Visconti, Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini abandoned their neo-realist roots to extend the boundaries of film art. As with Antonioni's groundbreaking L'Avventura, their attempts were sometimes met with initial hostility, but cinema now is unthinkable without their influence. Their works also paved the way for such politically-motivated directors as Bernardo Bertolucci (1900) and Pier Paolo Pasolini, whose Salo is still profoundly shocking to this day.

More recently, Italian cinema has given us arthouse favourites such as Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso and Nanni Moretti's Dear Diary. However, Italy also has a genius for genre, and no brief introduction to the country's cinema would be complete without mentioning the marvellous spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone (and here we have to mention the contribution of composer Ennio Morricone) and the blood-soaked gialli of Mario Bava and Dario Argento. [-]